ALTHOUGH Major Monkey had
ordered him out of the army, Peter Mink declared that he wasn't going
till he
was ready to leave.

"Very well," said
the Major easily. "You may stay here; and we'll go." But Peter Mink
was an obstinate fel­low. The moment the army started to move,
he
went along
with it. And what was worse, he insisted on walking right behind Major
Monkey,
and trying to strut just as the Major did.

Some of the generals
couldn't help snickering. And of course Major Monkey, couldn't overlook
such
behavior. "Order in the ranks!" he shouted as fiercely as he knew
how.

The generals stopped
tittering at once. For a minute or two everybody marched on in silence.
And
then the cry, "Halt!" rang suddenly out.

The generals all stopped.
Major Mon­key stopped, too. And his face seemed more wrinkled
than
ever as he
looked every general in the face.

Naturally, that took some
time, for there were several dozens of them. "Who shouted 'Halt?"'
the Major asked at last.

But nobody knew. At least,
nobody an­swered. And there was a good deal of low talking and
craning of
necks. For some reason or other, everybody peered at Peter Mink. But he
stared
straight ahead in the most innocent fashion.

Major Monkey said nothing
more. But he walked behind the army and picked up a stick.

"Forward, march!"
he commanded then. And as the army moved on, he continued to walk in
the rear,
just behind old Mr. Crow.

Soon the cry,
"Halt!" sounded again. And as soon as he heard it, Major Monkey threw
his stick with great force and caught Peter Mink neatly in the back of
his
head. Peter Mink toppled over where he stood.

"There!"
Major Monkey remarked. "He
won't bother us any more to-day." And before the army had stopped
gasp­ing,
he marched it forward again, leaving Peter Mink stretched upon the
ground.

Some of the generals
objected, and said that they thought that Peter Mink ought to be looked
after.

But Major Monkey told them
that they were in the army, and that it was war,
and they must
expect
even worse things to happen.

Now, Jimmy Rabbit was a
tender­hearted chap. He couldn't bear the thought of leaving
even a
rascal like
Peter Mink wounded and alone.

"I think you ought to
send the cook back to take care of him," Jimmy told Major Monkey.

At that, Mr. Crow
– who was
the cook – spoke up and said that he was going to stay with
the
army.

"I don't see," he
said, "how you could get along without me. An army, without a cook is
as
good as lost."

Major Monkey promptly agreed
with Mr. Crow.

"Certainly we musn't
get lost," he said. "If we were lost, the enemy never could find us.
And we might wander about in the woods for years and years."

His remarks made some of the
generals a bit uneasy. And one of them – a soldier called
Billy
Woodchuck –
announced that he would have to be leaving.